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A ROUGH TRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016
LONGLISTED FOR THE PENDERYN MUSIC BOOK PRIZE 2017

The unmissable memoir from the Fall guitarist and fashion expert.

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The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise is the extraordinary story, in her own words, of Brix Smith Start. Best known for her work in The Fall at the time when they were perhaps the most powerful and influential anti-authoritarian postpunk band in the world -- This Nation´s Saving Grace, The Wonderful and Frightening World Of ... -- Brix spent ten years in the band before a violent disintegration led to her exit and the end of her marriage with Mark E Smith.

But Brix´s story is much more than rock ´n´ roll highs and lows in one of the most radically dysfunctional bands around. Growing up in the Hollywood Hills in the ´60s in a dilapidated pink mansion her life has taken her from luxury to destitution, from the cover of the NME to waitressing in California, via the industrial wasteland of Manchester in the 1980s.

What emerges is a story of constant reinvention, jubilant highs and depressive ebbs; a singular journey of a teenage American girl on a collision course with English radicalism on her way to mid-life success on TV and in fashion.

Too bizarre, extreme and unlikely to exist in the pages of fiction, The Rise, The Fall, and The Rise could only exist in the pages of a memoir.

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...could be the working title of most music biographies, but it was nabbed by Brix Smith Start for her feisty tale of life in post-punk sonic terrorists the Fall with her contrarian husband Mark E. Smith. It is a breathless, bonkers and surprisingly joyful account of a rock horror show that requires no affinity with her oeuvre to enjoy. Neil McCormick The Daily Telegraph

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From a childhood in the celebrity-filled canyons of California to living in squalor in Manchester while playing in cult band, the Fall, to sitting front row in fashion shows as buyer for her own fashion store, to presenting prime-time television; Brix´s journey has been one that required a fearlessness few women have and has brought inspiration to many. A pioneering musical icon, she is one of the few successful female guitarists and songwriters, working not just with the Fall but with her solo band Adult Net and her current band, Brix and the Extricated. She currently lives in Shoreditch, London, with her husband, Philip and her two pugs, Gladys and Pixie.

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